The cleaning of drainage ditches alongside roadways and highways is generally undertaken by using direct man power of several men employing shovels and rakes to collect debris in spaced piles. These are later shoveled into a dirt truck, which is slowly driven by the piles of debris. Also sometimes, in addition, backhoes and road graders are used. Considerable manpower is used and the cost varies from $600 to $2,000 per mile. Consequently, the overall cleanup is not undertaken too often. Between cleanings sufficient debris may collect causing blockage of the drainage ditch and this blockage is sometimes a contributing cause to a wash out along a road often destroying significant portions of the road.
Although machinery has been designed to create ditches, such as illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,183,706 issued in 1916 to D. B. and M. C. Williams, and to create trench excavations, such as illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 3,645,020, issued in 1972 to D. Beslin and B. Beherano, and to plow in a rotary motion, such as illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 2,533,793 issued in 1950 to H. W. Hamlett, and to sweep streets, as illustrated and described in U.S. Pat. No. 1,363,502, issued to Steven Duich in 1920; and to dig and to clean ditches as set forth by E. Heuman in his U.S. Pat. No. 1,721,392 of 1929, and by W. Baker, in his U.S. Pat. No. 3,309,802 of 1967; machinery has not been provided to automatically clean drainage ditches already made and in use, which are not to be basically altered except to be cleaned and the debris removed is fully controlled to be deposited, preferably in the dirt collecting chamber of a dirt truck, on which the ditch cleaning machine is preferably mounted, and such cleaning occurs regardless of the variable spacing of the ditch away from the side of the road on which the truck must remain.